Chords
by William Easley
Summary: Fighting supernatural monsters, ghosts, and demons-that's easy. The hard thing is to face up to your old fears and insecurities. Wendip is on the horizon in this one-shot set in my usual continuity.


**Chords**

 **(July 2014)**

* * *

Dipper walked down the trail past the bonfire clearing, then cut through the woods. It was stupid to have to make this walk every single day, but if he stayed in the Shack, Mabel bugged him. And Soos kept making requests, mainly, "Hey, dude, play that Soos Weirdmageddon song for me again." If Grunkle Stan happened to be in, he'd complain about the noise—"Play a _real_ song! Somethin' by Hendrix!"

So . . . once a day he toted his guitar down the trail and into the woods. Sometimes a few Gnomes would gather to listen to him practice chords. They never talked to him, but they seemed to enjoy the experience. Or maybe they were just focusing their hatred of his playing, trying to force him to go away. It was always hard to tell with Gnomes.

Dipper sat on the stump of an oak tree and tuned his guitar. _I ought to save up and buy myself a better one. This is OK for a beginner, but if I really want to get good, I'll need an instrument that doesn't have to be retuned halfway through "Waltzing Matilda."_

He worked on an F chord. It should in theory have been simple, but F is a barre chord, and you have to press on three different strings with your forefinger, skipping over three strings in between the first one and the last two! It was a stretch for Dipper. He couldn't have attempted it last year, but now his pinky finger had come in. When he'd started taking guitar lessons, he'd had to use one of the alternate fingerings, which he secretly thought of as cheats.

He tried again and again, with no success. His hands weren't quite big enough or strong enough to pull off the chord successfully. Frustrated, Dipper turned to another difficult one that he was trying to master: B7. The trouble there was having to mute an open string and not mute a second open one—plus the same trouble with the fingering, the difficulty of applying pressure properly in a region of the guitar neck that seemed built specially to make everything sound out of tune.

Switching from B7 to F and back again, Dipper struggled. He paused and just for relief played a meandering little melody that he'd composed himself, something he thought of as "Cold Creek" since it reminded him of water gurgling over the stones of that stream in the woods near the Shack. It had no B7 or F-major chords. He ran through it twice, closing his eyes and humming.

And he jumped as though a snake had slithered across his feet when he heard a voice say, "That's not too sucky, kid."

Dipper's eyes flew open. "Robbie! What are you doing here?"

Robbie, whose acne had cleared up a lot, wagged jazz hands in the air and said, "Aaah! What are you doing here? Relax, kid, I'm not gonna _pound_ on you." He walked closer. He still wore a dark-gray hoodie with a broken heart on the front, but not the same one as before. It appeared at first glance almost identical, but if you looked closely at the heart, the jagged line in it had been stitched up. And if you looked even more closely at the stitches, you saw they were the letters TAMBRY repeated several times. Robbie stood looking down at Dipper's guitar. "So how long have you been playing?"

"About six months," Dipper said. "I'm still trying to master a few chords."

"Fr'instance?"

"F-major for one," Dipper said. "I can't get it."

"Yeah? Let me see your hatchet."

"My what?"

Robbie sighed elaborately. "An electric guitar is an axe, all right? So, I figure a beginner's acoustic is a hatchet. At most. Let me see it."

Dipper handed it over. "Get up and let me sit there and you watch," Robbie said. "Okay, so this is the F-major, dig it." He strummed, and the chord sounded only a little off-key. "Wah, let me tighten this B string."

"Yeah, it gets out of tune fast," Dipper said.

Robbie plinked it, tilting his head. "'Kay, let me try that again." This time the F-major sounded clear and strong. "Hard with an acoustic. I got my electric in the car, you want to walk back and try it on that."

"Why . . . are you being nice to me?" Dipper asked.

Robbie shrugged. "I dunno. Seems kinda dumb for me to push around somebody younger'n me now. I mean, I'm gonna be a senior next year, man. And then—" he shrugged. "Other plans."

"You're going to marry Tambry," Dipper said.

"Oh, for—does _everybody_ know?" Robbie said, looking so upset that Dipper momentarily feared he would pull a Pete Townshend and smash his guitar against a tree. But then he grinned sheepishly and shrugged. "Yeah, yeah, she said yes. So, my folks are gonna help out some, and hers are gonna help out some, and I'm going to college, right? To study music and business."

"Whaaat?" Dipper asked. "Business, man?"

"Yeah!" Robbie said. "'Cause I want to play my brand of music, right, but one of these days I wanna be a producer! And Tambry's writing songs now. But she's also going to college and she's gonna get her teaching certificate, so if we need it, she can help support the family until we, you know start to make money and, uh, decide to have kids. If we do."

"You're a lucky guy, Robbie," Dipper said.

Robbie smiled. "Tell me about it, kid."

"Call me Dipper, OK?"

"Feels weird, but OK. Dipper. Hey, what did I hear you playin' at first? I mean, I got out of the car, meaning to go in and talk to Soos, and this faint music came drifting from the freakin' woods and I followed it to you."

"Oh," Dipper said. "That—that's just something I kind of noodled together. It's just a simple slow melody, that's all. No complex chords. I call it 'Cold Creek.'"

Robbie held out the guitar. "Play through it for me."

"I—uh, I don't—I really haven't played in front of anybody but my teacher and Mabel. And, uh, Soos."

Robbie shrugged. "You want to be a guitarist, learn to play for other people. Come on, man, we're like brothers in music here." He grinned. "Much as it pains me to say it. Just let me hear your number, OK?"

"O-OK," Dipper said. He hung the guitar around his neck, tested the tuning—pesky B string needed an adjustment—and then started into the melody, A7-D-G. He hummed along.

Robbie nodded, listening with his head tilted to one side, tapping his toe to the beat. When Dipper finished, he shrugged. "That's all there is."

"Not half bad, Dipper," Robbie said. "Let me see if I got it."

He had memorized the tune just from Dipper's playing—but Robbie played it far more smoothly, throwing in grace notes. Dipper could hear the water rippling when Robbie played the tune. "Oh, man," he said when the older teen finished. "That's so much better than I can make it sound!"

"Yeah, well, I've been playing since I was eight. You'll get there," Robbie said. He looked as if he wanted to say or ask something, but broke off short and handed the guitar back.

"What?" Dipper asked.

Reluctantly, Robbie said, "Don't get mad. I don't mean this to be mean. But, dude, straight up, now: Did you start learning the guitar 'cause of Wendy?"

"I guess I sort of did," Dipper admitted. "Because she used to love to listen to you play."

"Yeah," Robbie said softly. "She did, man. She really did. Well, come on to the car and we'll take my axe in and you can see if an F don't come easier on an electric."

As they walked past the Bottomless Pit, Dipper said, "Robbie—you're being kinda cool, man."

"Working at it," Robbie said. He stopped. "Dipper, I remember you and Mabel in that crazy flying pyramid thing. I guess the rest of us flaked out on you, but from what I hear, you and your uncles kicked that yellow thing's ass. If it had an ass. I know I ragged on you, but, man, you're a stand-up guy, you know? And you're a fellow musician. How long until you write a song for Wendy?"

"Wrote one already," Dipper muttered.

"How's she like it?"

"She's never heard it. Maybe never will. I get scared every time I think I want to play it."

"You want to let me hear it?"

"No. Not yet, anyway," Dipper said. "It's special, you know?"

"Yeah, I remember how it is." Robbie sighed. "Make sure there's no back-masking in it, OK? She hates that."

"No, it's just simple and kinda stupid," Dipper said. "Like me."

They reached Robbie's car, and he unlocked the trunk and took out his guitar case. Dipper asked, "Why did you want to see Soos?"

"Huh? Oh, your uncle Stan—Stanley? You know, the guy that wore the phony eye patch, not the other one—"

"Stanley," Dipper said.

"Yeah, well, he's talkin' abut sponsoring another dance in the teen hall, and I wanted to ask Soos if he might help me and my band get a gig there. We could use the money."

"Man, I'm sure you can!" Dipper said. "You guys are amazing! I remember how you did all those different styles!"

"We're getting even better than we were then," Robbie said. "Tambry plays a hell of a keyboard—shouldn't have said hell, sorry."

"That's OK," Dipper said.

It took five minutes to get Soos' enthusiastic agreement to DJ and his endorsement of Robby V and the Tombstones as the live band, and then for him to call Grunkle Stan and set up everything. "Easy as peas, see?" Soos told Robbie. "Hey, man, I seriously look forward to it!"

A little later Robbie plugged in the guitar and a small portable amp, and the two musicians sat side by side on the back porch of the Shack, feet dangling. Dipper kept at it, under Robbie's tutelage, until he produced a solid F-major. "There, see?" Robbie said. "Not so hard with an electric."

"Lot easier," Dipper agreed. "Hey—have you written any songs lately?"

"Thought you'd never ask, dude," Robbie said, reclaiming his electric. "Take your acoustic and we'll see if you can follow along. This one's not a hard rocker, more your style. I call it 'Tambry and Me.'"

"Good title, man," Dipper said.

"She thinks so," Robbie agreed with a grin.

It wasn't exactly a ballad, but it wasn't exactly death metal, either. Waddles and Widdles, Mabel's two pigs, came sauntering over, sat down, and listened. By the time they'd been through the song three times, Dipper could play a passable backup. And before Robbie left, he and Dipper exchanged a high five. "Good luck with Wendy, kid—I mean Dipper," Robbie said.

"Yeah, thanks. Same to you and Tambry."

Robbie paused and looked at the ground. Then he said, "Never tell anybody this, Dipper. It's just between us musicians, OK? I love Tambry. But I'll always be—well—fond—of Wendy. She's been my friend for a real long time. You treat her right, or I'll kick your ass."

"Deal," Dipper said. "If I ever hurt her, I'll bend over for the kick."

Robbie nodded, put his guitar back in the trunk, gave a last wave, and drove away. When Dipper went into the Shack, Wendy called to him from the gift shop: "Were you playin' your guitar out back, Dip?"

"Uh, yeah, I was. A little," he said.

"You're getting good," she said. "Your playing reminds me of Robbie's. I mean, he's kind of a wad, but he plays a good guitar."

"Right, he does," Dipper agreed.

"Hey, play for me?"

Dipper swallowed his first startled alarm. Then he said, "I promise I will, Wendy. One day soon. When I think I'm good enough. I'll play you a tune about—about fairy tales."

"Look forward to it, man! Hey—movie night tonight?"

"Yeah! Here in the Shack, if you want. Soos and Melody are going to see a movie, and Mabel's babysitting Little Soos."

"Oh, man!" Wendy laughed. "Goin' by the last time she did that, it might be better to watch the two of them than the movie! But yeah, here's great. Let's order pizza! Everything but anchovies!"

"You got it, magic girl."

"What?" Wendy asked with a puzzled smile.

"Nothing," Dipper said. "Maybe later."

Maybe one day when he got his courage up. When he could play a good F-major chord, and a B7, maybe. When he felt good enough. Good enough for the song.

Good enough for Wendy.

* * *

 _The End_


End file.
